These earlier posts reported on U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes’ decision to sanction the Department of Justice under the Hyde Act for its sloppy indictment and handling of a criminal fraud prosecution of Oklahoma lawyer John Claro. The always alert Ellen Podgor passes along that Judge Hughes has issued his formal ruling on the Hyde Act sanctions, in which he observes:

The United States Attorney indicted an Oklahoma businessman in conscious indifference to the legal and factual basis of the charges that they brought against him. The fifty-four-count indictment was a jumble of claims and stray facts ñ a garbled press release about working men who cannot get insurance. The court dismissed all counts of the indictment. The businessman seeks defense costs. He will be repaid because the prosecution was not substantially justified. [. . .]
Criminal prosecution casts a shadow on defendants that can linger even after an acquittal. The discretion the government has to prosecute those it thinks guilty of crimes must be grounded in a sound facts and articulated law. The Hyde Amendment was passed to give some recompense to those prosecuted without this most basic discretionary safeguard from prosecutorial oppression. The case against [this individual] lacked even a semblance of responsible work by the government. His attorneys had to work with a jumbled array of facts and theories, a mountain of documentary evidence, and unresponsive government lawyers.

Sort of makes you wonder what Judge Hughes would have done with a number of the Enron-related prosecutions, doesn’t it? Here’s a hint.